Call. Ask. Read. Pick up. Reply. Go to.
Action words, right?
I use these words everyday because David Allen told me I had too many “non action words” on my “action list” and “non action words” don’t help your brain, they just make you scratch your head in wonder. Bookmark that thought. We’ll come back to it.
| Ever have 1,100+ emails in your inbox? Beastly. |
A few years ago, I looked at my inbox and it had over 1,100 items in it and I would nearly get a headache just looking at the computer screen because… well, where do you start with 1,100 emails? My inbox extended probably 50 screen lengths and had become a woeful Beast that would stare me down from the moment I fired up my computer.
Since I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done, I’ve been able to get my inbox to empty two to three times a week. Caveat: “been able to” and “have done” are definitely two different matters, but I can recall uttering the words “free at last” more than once over these years, simply because I knew the impossible could be done, and I’d seen it happen at least once myself.
Today, I exclusively run Microsoft Outlook because it has rules that automatically re-route 80% of my incoming mail into simple, categorized folders and keeps my inbox nearly clutter-free. Can you imagine the freedom I feel every time I sit down at my inbox to see that it’s less than one screen long? No longer did I worry about getting pulled away from my desk by an “important” telemarketer’s phone call or a dirty diaper (hey, when you work from home 50% of the time or more that’s a clear & present danger…)
When I first grasped the concept of what sin really is and the fact that I could sin in my mind without taking any external {Call. Ask. Read. Pick up. Reply. Go to.} action, it was as if I had suddenly sat down in front of that computer again to face